Movie Listings for Jan. 15-21

A scene from Henry Hampton’s documentary “Eyes on the Prize” being shown on Monday at the Museum of the Moving Image. See listing below.CreditJames Karales

Jan. 14, 2016

Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases: nytimes.com/movies.

‘Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip’ (PG, 1:26) The latest big-screen adventure of the unkillable singing chipmunks, the fourth in the franchise, features a simpler plot than the previous two films. It also puts the focus back on Alvin, Theodore and Simon, leaving the female trio, the Chipettes, in the background. The boys are worried about what they think are the engagement plans of their human minder, Dave, and take a road trip to disrupt them. Catchy songs abound. (Neil Genzlinger)

★ ‘Anesthesia’ (R, 1:29) Tim Blake Nelson’s exquisitely compressed cri de coeur about the meaning of life in a hyper-connected world uses the format of movies like “Crash” and “Babel” to evoke the anxious intellectual tenor of our times. The thematic variation on which “Anesthesia” focuses is the cruel paradox of living in a world of life-enhancing technological miracles that don’t begin to fulfill our yearning for a more purposeful, satisfying existence. (Stephen Holden)

‘Anomalisa’ (R, 1:30) Directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, this sad, stirringly painful stop-motion puppet whatsit centers on a floundering soul (voiced by David Thewlis) who, while on a business trip, has an affair with a stranger (Jennifer Jason Leigh). An invaluable Tom Noonan voices everyone else. (Manohla Dargis)

★ ‘The Big Short’ (R, 2:10) Adam McKay’s adaptation of the Michael Lewis best seller is a wildly entertaining movie that leaves you nauseated and shaking with rage. That’s as it should be, since Mr. McKay and his energetic cast (including Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling) set out to capture both the giddy thrills of the economic bubble of the mid-2000s and the moral corruption that fueled it. Rooting for the film’s designated good guys means rooting for economic collapse, and you feel the awfulness of this contradiction. (A. O. Scott)

★ ‘Bridge of Spies’ (PG-13, 2:15) In this gravely moody, perfectly directed thriller about a real 1962 spy swap, Steven Spielberg returns you to the good old bad days of the Cold War and its fictions, with their bottomless political chasms and moral gray areas. Tom Hanks leads a terrific cast that includes Mark Rylance as a Soviet mole and Scott Shepherd as a C.I.A. operative. (Dargis)

★ ‘Brooklyn’ (PG-13, 1:51) Saoirse Ronan gives a remarkably lively and subtle performance as Eilis Lacey, a young woman who emigrates from Ireland to New York in the early 1950s, in John Crowley’s lovely adaptation of the novel by Colm Toibin. (Scott)

★ ‘Carol’ (R, 1:58) Todd Haynes’s gorgeous adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel stars Rooney Mara as Therese Belivet, a young woman in early-1950s New York who falls for an older suburban housewife played by Cate Blanchett. The blossoming of their love affair is related in subdued colors and whispered words, and it lingers in the air like an old song. (Scott)

★ ‘Chi-Raq’ (R, 1:58) Furious, funny and wildly uneven, Spike Lee’s latest is a restaging of Aristophanes’ fifth-century B.C. sex-strike comedy, “Lysistrata,” now set in a Chicago where sidewalks are washed with blood and hearts beat to the rhythm of gunfire. (Dargis)

‘Concussion’ (PG-13, 2:03) This fact-and-fiction hybrid stars Will Smith as a crusading doctor — the real Dr. Bennet Omalu — who sets out to discover why some professional football players are dying too young. Written and directed by Peter Landesman, the movie has a cause and heart but not enough real tension. (Dargis)

★ ‘Creed’ (PG-13, 2:13) The “Rocky” saga, revised and reborn, with the Italian Stallion in the role of the grizzled trainer, helping a young contender prepare for his shot at the title. The contender is Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), the love child of Apollo Creed, Rocky’s erstwhile nemesis and eventual best friend. The director is Ryan Coogler (“Fruitvale Station”), at 29 a rising champion in his own right. (Scott)

‘Daddy’s Home’ (PG-13, 1:36) An ugly psychological cockfight posing as a family friendly comedy, the father-stepfather competition pits a meek Will Ferrell against a feral Mark Wahlberg. It is best avoided unless a movie that has the attitude of a schoolyard bully happens to be your thing. (Holden)

‘The Danish Girl’ (R, 2:00) The story of a transgender pioneer, Lili Elbe, becomes a tasteful, sensitive and somewhat inert costume drama in the hands of Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”). Eddie Redmayne plays Lili, whom we first encounter as Einar Wegener, a Danish landscape painter. His wife, Gerda (Alicia Vikander), also an artist, is the emotional center of the film, in part because Mr. Redmayne’s performance, while technically flawless, keeps the audience at a distance from Lili’s experience. (Scott)

‘The Forest’ (PG-13, 1:33) If you aren’t bothered by the use of real-life suicides as the inspiration for a horror movie, ”The Forest” is a decently made creeper. Natalie Dormer plays both halves of a pair of twins: Jess, who has disappeared in the so-called Suicide Forest at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan, and Sara, who travels there to look for her. In real life, the forest is where many people have gone to end their lives. In the movie, it has a supernatural pull, causing anyone who ventures into it to lose touch with reality. Ms. Dormer handles the deterioration convincingly. (Genzlinger)

★ ‘45 Years’ (R, 1:35) Andrew Haigh’s new film is a loving, devastating portrait of a long, happy marriage that encounters an unusual crisis. Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay play Kate and Geoff Mercer, whose plans for an anniversary party are disrupted by news about an old, long-dead girlfriend of Geoff’s. (Scott)

★ ‘The Good Dinosaur’ (PG, 1:40) In the beginning there was a dinosaur — followed by a kid scampering after him on all fours. That’s the story in Pixar’s latest, a lovely, eccentric charmer directed by Peter Sohn in which a gentle dinosaur roams the earth with a doglike boy. (Dargis)

‘The Hateful Eight’ (R, 2:48) More talking and killing from Quentin Tarantino, this time in a frontier outpost after the Civil War. Some interesting ideas about the racial politics of the Western genre peek out amid the verbiage and the violence, but Mr. Tarantino’s grandstanding gets in the way. With Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Samuel L. Jackson, whose performance as a former Union officer almost lifts the film out of its self-conscious rut. (Scott)

‘The Himalayas’ (No rating, 2:04, in Korean) Chronicling the experiences of a seasoned mountain climber and the young man he takes as his protégé, “The Himalayas” is a broad comedy, a buddy movie, an adventure and a cornball weepie, not always in proportions that go well together. (Ben Kenigsberg)

★ ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2’ (PG-13, 2:16) Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) returns to finish the fight, defeat the enemy and send off a big-screen series that has had an astonishing run both in cold-cash terms and in its meaningful symbolism. She’s ready (and so are you). (Dargis)

★ ‘Janis: Little Girl Blue’ (No rating, 1:43) The documentary biography of Janis Joplin sustains a compelling double vision of Joplin, the needy lost child, pleading for love in a baby’s primal squall, and Joplin, the hippie rock-blues mama she was on her way to becoming when she died at 27 of a drug overdose. (Holden)

‘Joy’ (PG-13, 2:04) Jennifer Lawrence, at her tough, radiant best, plays Joy Mangano, an entrepreneur stymied by her family in David O. Russell’s rousing and chaotic fable of bootstrap capitalism. (Scott)

‘Macbeth’ (R, 1:52) The best reason to see this slick version of the sanguineous tragedy is Michael Fassbender’s exceptionally fine title performance, though the writing isn’t bad, either. A mushy-mouthed Marion Cotillard co-stars; Justin Kurzel directed. (Dargis)

★ ‘The Martian’ (PG-13, 2:21) Matt Damon stars in Ridley Scott’s space western and blissed-out cosmic high about an American astronaut who, like a latter-day Robinson Crusoe, learns to survive on his own island of despair. Funny, loose and optimistic. (Dargis)

★ ‘Mustang’ (PG-13, 1:37, in Turkish) Full of life, “Mustang” is a stunning debut feature by Deniz Gamze Ergüven about five sisters in rural Turkey. Confined to their grandmother’s house, the girls bridle against losing their freedoms in a story grounded in both laughter and tears, and in the resilient strength of these girls against soul-deadening strictures. (Nicolas Rapold)

‘Only Yesterday’ (No rating, 1:58, in Japanese) Isao Takahata, an Academy Award nominee and one of the twin pillars of the anime giant Studio Ghibli, brings the cleareyed grace of his animation to the lovely story of a 27-year-old woman looking back on her childhood. Originally released in Japan in 1991, the film is receiving a freshly voiced — and very welcome — United States release for its 25th anniversary. (Rapold)

★ ‘Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict’ (No rating, 1:37) Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s sleek, entertaining portrait of the collector who assembled one of the great troves of modern art is well organized, with hundreds of beautiful images spanning decades of artists Guggenheim knew, galleries she ran, parties she hosted. Using tapes of interviews before she died in 1979, the documentary is imbued with Guggenheim’s presence, even as art-world denizens dish on her foibles and vanities. (Daniel M. Gold)

‘Point Break’ (PG-13, 1:53) An athlete turned F.B.I. agent (Luke Bracey) infiltrates a gang of extreme-sports radicals (led by Edgar Ramirez as “Bodhi”) who purport to honor the earth through daring criminal acts. In Ericson Core’s remake of Kathryn Bigelow’s superior 1991 thriller, the balky story is just dramatic filler between impressive showcases of wingsuiting, motorbiking and the like. (Rapold)

‘The Revenant’ (R, 2:36) By turns soaring and overblown, this American foundation story from the director Alejandro G. Iñárritu (“Birdman”) features a battalion of very fine, hardworking actors. None are more diligently committed than Leonardo DiCaprio, as a 1823 mountain man who endures a crucible of suffering. (Dargis)

‘Room’ (R, 1:58) Brie Larson and an exceptional child actor, Jacob Tremblay, play mother and son in the adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel. Written by Ms. Donoghue and directed by Lenny Abrahamson, the movie flickers with grace and imagination during its initial half but devolves into a dreary, platitudinous therapy movie in its second. (Dargis)

‘Sisters’ (R, 1:58) It’s always fun to watch Amy Poehler and Tina Fey together, but it would be more fun if this movie weren’t such a cobbled-together mess of tired raunch and weak sentimentality. (Scott)

‘Son of Saul’ (R, 1:47, in Hungarian, German, Yiddish and Polish) This debut feature from the 38-year-old Hungarian filmmaker Laszlo Nemes is a powerful but ungainly blend of allegory and thriller set in a Nazi death camp. Saul (Geza Rohrig) is a member of the Sonderkommando, Jewish inmates assigned to assist in the murder of their fellow prisoners in exchange for meager privileges. In his company, the viewer is given a tour of horror that is unnerving both for its harshness and for the sense of slick, self-congratulatory artifice that lurks around the edges of the frame. (Scott)

‘Spectre’ (PG-13, 2:28) Bond, James Bond, etc. (Dargis)

★ ‘Spotlight’ (R, 2:07) A team of Boston Globe investigative reporters — played by Michael Keaton, Brian d’Arcy James, Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo — takes on the local archdiocese in this powerful fact-based newspaper procedural, directed by Tom McCarthy. The movie, with a superb cast and a tightly constructed script, is an unflinching investigation of systemic moral rot and a rousing defense of the values of professional journalism. (Scott)

‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ (PG-13, 2:15) It’s good! (Dargis)

★ ‘The Treasure’ (No rating, 1:29, in Romanian) The latest film from Corneliu Porumbiou, Romania’s master of deadpan existential proceduralism, observes two hard-pressed middle-class guys digging for riches that may or may not be buried in a backyard. Their adventure is part fairy-tale, part farce, and an astute examination of the social and moral state of Europe in an age of economic crisis and political malaise. (Scott)

★ ‘Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art ' (No rating, 1:12) The writer and director James Crump’s cogent, brisk survey of a group of American artists using the environment as their medium is worth seeing on the biggest screen possible for its generous views of sprawling pieces like the legendary “Spiral Jetty” by Robert Smithson. (Glenn Kenny)

‘Trumbo’ (R, 2:04) This clunker about the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) tells a great-man story with a patchwork of fact and fiction, mixing in the odd bit of newsreel with a great many dull, visually flat and poorly lighted dramatic scenes. Jay Roach directed. (Dargis)

‘Youth’ (R, 2:04) Paolo Sorrentino follows the luxurious melancholy of “The Great Beauty” with this weary rumination on aging, set in a spectacular Alpine resort. Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel play old friends — a composer and a filmmaker — who feel their erotic and creative powers waning as the world goes on its decadent way. (Scott)

Film Series

Bert Williams And Company (through Tuesday) The Museum of Modern Art welcomes back the 1913 silent film “Lime Kiln Club Field Day,” starring the Caribbean-American entertainer Bert Williams and an all-black cast. Abandoned by its white producers, the movie — believed to be the oldest surviving film to feature African-American actors — languished for years in unmarked containers before being reassembled. The story of a fraught courtship, the film presents performers who, amid widespread segregation, vibrantly asserted their art. Also screening: “Lime Kiln” outtakes and Williams’s more heavily stereotyped comedy “A Natural Born Gambler,” from 1916. At various times, Museum of Modern Art Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, 212-708-9400, moma.org. (Andy Webster)

‘Eyes on the Prize: Bridge to Freedom’ and ‘Selma’ (Monday) To celebrate Martin Luther King’s Birthday, the Museum of the Moving Image is hosting a free 1 p.m. screening of an episode of “Eyes on the Prize,” PBS’s 1987 series on the Civil Rights era. The episode, focusing on the marches from Selma, Ala., in 1965, will be followed at 3 p.m. by a (non-free, except for members) showing of “Selma,” Ava DuVernay’s acclaimed 2014 dramatization of the same events, starring David Oyelowo as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 35th Avenue at 37th Street, Astoria, Queens, 718-784-0077, movingimage.us. (Kenigsberg)

January Brunch: On the QT (Saturdays and Sundays, through Jan. 31) Nodding to the recently released “The Hateful Eight,” the Nitehawk Cinema gathers Quentin Tarantino movies made when his works were a mere two-and-a-half hours or less. “Jackie Brown” (1997), Tarantino’s Elmore Leonard adaptation, is a model of understated economy (Saturday and Sunday); the caper “Reservoir Dogs” (1992) is lean, mean and sometimes hilarious (Jan. 23 and 24); the perfect cast of “True Romance” (1993) — directed by Tony Scott from a Tarantino script — makes his dialogue sing (Jan. 30 and 31). At various times, 136 Metropolitan Avenue, near Berry Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 718-384-3980, nitehawkcinema.com; some shows are sold out. (Webster)

Lhomme Behind the Camera (Tuesdays through Feb. 23) This series on the cinematographer Pierre Lhomme, who worked with such essential filmmakers as Chris Marker and Robert Bresson, continues with a pair of films that demonstrate Mr. Lhomme’s range. The French Resistance drama “Army of Shadows,” directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, is a study in chiaroscuro and dimly lit rooms. Jean Eustache’s three-and-a-half-hour “The Mother and the Whore,” which finds Jean-Pierre Léaud caught between Bernadette Lafont and Françoise Lebrun, is all spiky black-and-white. Showing on 35 millimeter, this discursive, influential classic doesn’t screen often. Florence Gould Hall, French Institute Alliance Française, 55 East 59th Street, Manhattan, 800-982-2787, fiaf.org. (Kenigsberg)

‘The Mask’ (Friday through Sunday) After his patient, an archaeologist, commits suicide, a psychiatrist, Dr. Allan Barnes (Paul Stevens), tries on the ancient mask that drove the man insane. This nifty 1961 chiller — billed in a restoration at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival as both Canada’s first feature-length horror film and its first 3-D feature — arrived late to the stereoscopic craze of the early 1950s, but it made up for it with a great gimmick. An original viewer would receive a “Magic Mystic Mask” (really just fancy glasses) to put on in sync with Barnes — the better to appreciate a surreal barrage of 3-D eyeballs, snakes and flames. Anthology Film Archives will provide masks that look like the originals. At 7:15 and 9:15 p.m., Anthology Film Archives, 32-34 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village, 212-505-5181, anthologyfilmarchives.org. (Kenigsberg)

Modern Matinees: A Pioneer Cowboy (through Feb. 26) Even in the 1910s, when stage-trained actors with unconventional looks could mosey their way onto the big screen more easily, William S. Hart and his melancholy woodcarving of a face cut a jarring figure. An acquaintance of Wyatt Earp and an accomplished Shakespearean actor on Broadway, Hart didn’t arrive in Hollywood until he was 49. He made up for lost time, appearing in more than 60 films in just over a decade. This Museum of Modern Art retrospective includes the boisterous 1916 Western “Hell’s Hinges” (Jan. 22), in which Hart’s gunman sees the light when a preacher and his sister arrive in the titular territory, described in the film’s intertitles as “a gun-fighting, man-killing, devil’s den of iniquity that scorched even the sun-parched soil on which it stood.” On various days, a detailed schedule is at moma.org. (Eric Grode)

New York Jewish Film Festival (through Jan. 26) This event, presented by Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum, offers a constellation of viewpoints on the Jewish experience, looking to the festival’s history as it celebrates its 25th anniversary and speaking to Judaism’s present. Among its offerings, “NYJFF at 25: A Retrospective” comprises past festival hits. “I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman” — about the Belgian pioneer, who died in October — has its American premiere. And having a 20th-anniversary screening is Todd Solondz’s eviscerating 1995 portrait of adolescent torment, “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” accompanied by “Night and Fog,” Alain Resnais’s 1955 documentary about the Holocaust. At various times, Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, on West 65th Street, Lincoln Center. A schedule is at nyjff.org. (Webster)